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Editor’s Note

Welcome to Matrix Magazine’s extended Conceptual Dossier. When Sina Queyras and I set out to co-curate a conceptualisms issue, we had no idea that we would end up working on two issues instead of one. As the amount of quality submissions grew exponentially, our own ambitions for a second or extended issue also grew. I am extremely grateful and honoured to introduce you to these brilliant conceptualists and their work.

Ranging from Simon Wake’s “Immortal Poets” to Kristen Gallagher’s “Things You Can Buy,” the works gathered here point to the artifact, the sediment, the storage of data as more than mere trace elements shadowing a compositional plane. The act of collecting and parsing information is perhaps at its most exemplary in Jeanette John’s “Plans for Walls and Floors” where space is compressed into units of data vacillating between artifice and artifact, confounds the two. In contrast, derek beaulieu’s and Steve Giasson’s visual works use space, not as units of information per say, but as a a manner of framing the given-to-be seen. In several instances, the texts gathered here invite visual deconstruction, textual reconfigurations, but most of all they invite us to consider the frame as substantiation device.

I invite you to explore, surf, read into the vantage point, the in-between spaces, the tangible presence or absence, and wish you a bonne lecture!